Cultural Differences
by Of Questionable Veracity
Summary: On their way to continue their hard work maintaining the Cycle, a Reaper encounters something that plays by entirely different rules.


**I really wouldn't take this too seriously if I were you.**

**One day I was just idly daydreaming to myself about how, well, 40K and ME stuff can match up pretty close, really, so what would be a complete imbalance? Then I thought of how the Culuture universe operates on an entirely different scale and with entirely different rules. How would that play out?**

**Probably not like this. So like I say. I wouldn't take it too seriously.**

The world ahead teemed with life, a state of affairs unlikely to last.

Those charged with defending it - those trifling, insignificant organics - had imagined themselves prepared. They had set out their ships, built their strongholds, readied themselves for the onslaught, thinking perhaps that they might at least be able to delay the inevitable, buy time for help to arrive or for those in their care to escape.

They had been wrong. On all counts.

Their ships were now so much scrap drifting in orbit, their planetbound defences smashed to rubble, their troops overrun by forces deployed planetside in teeming, numberless waves. The weak and the helpless had had no time to flee, and had died without even having the time to realise how utterly their defenders had failed.

So far, the usual. Same story all over the galaxy, really.

Coda, a Reaper rather proud of what it felt to be a departure from the normal naming conventions of its peers, was approaching the world somewhat later than it might have liked. It had been waylaid by a roving fleet and so had unfortunately had to waste some time blowing them into debris, hence the lateness. Still, it had been unremarkable and unchallenging delay.

Challenge being something they actually appreciated, when it happened. Not that it ever mattered in the end, of course, but it was always amusing and engaging to see what the latest Cycle could muster. The last one had been very involved. This one? So far, not so much. A shame.

Reapers were an inscrutable bunch. Or, rather, they fancied themselves as inscrutable. For ineffable, ancient machines they did often seem to suffer many of the transitory failings of the lesser, squishier races. Not that many were in a position to notice. They noticed it among themselves though, and tended to look down on it.

Harbinger's increasing frustration and annoyance? All because of one piffling little organic causing problems? In the blink of an eye the years would take care of that problem anyway - where was the use in getting angry? No dignity in that! Very unbecoming. Not that anyone would mention this to their face of course.

Well, 'face'.

Still, just one of those things.

For now, Coda had the present to focus on. The planet ahead, the last vestiges of resistance still needed stamping out and Coda wasn't going to let this journey be a complete waste. Dropping in just beyond the orbit of the last planet it powered in towards its target, syncing up with its fellows in the process. Seemed like everything was going pretty much as it always did, just as Coda had suspected. Some holdouts though, thankfully. Not for much longer though, of course.

One step closer to the Cycle wrapping up. As was inevitable.

Only, suddenly, every system Coda possessed went immediately and completely dead. All sensors shut off. Engines deactivated. Charged weapons bled to idle. Barriers dropped. It drifted into system blind, tumbling through space.

Its confusion was absolute.

"WHAT? WHAT IS THIS?" It thought to itself, trying without success to even identify the source of the problem, let alone rectify it. Everything was inert. This should not have been possible.

"WHAT HAS HAPPENED?"

Then there came a message, loud and clear in the stifling darkness it had been thrust into. A single voice.

"Hello. Just wanted a chat. If you had a moment?"

Reapers don't really experience surprise - or at least don't like to admit they do - but the split-second pause before it was fully able to respond was more-or-less equivalent to a flesh-and-blood creature gawping with their mouth hanging open in abject disbelief.

It got over it though.

"IDENTIFY YOURSELF," Coda said, continuing to try and restart its dead systems. Some sputtered, but even that was an effort. It simply should not have been possible.

"Right, yes, I am the Picket Ship _The Fewer Questions Asked, The Better_. I wouldn't worry too much about how I got here, if I were you. Just happened to be passing and I couldn't help but notice that you and your associates appear to be engaged in a war of galactic genocide? Now, obviously, I see that and I'm curious."

Again Coda struggled to restart itself and again didn't really get anywhere. Still deaf, still mostly dumb, still blind, still drifting. Its fury rose sharply. This was a travesty!

"RELEASE ME AT ONCE."

"Release? Oh, yes, the effectors, sorry. No, no I don't think I will. You'd probably just try to do something stupid. That's actually rather what I wanted to talk to you about - stupidity. Or an absence of intelligence, rather I should say."

"IDENTIFY YOURSELF."

"Didn't I do that already? It hardly matters anyway. Look, I'm as much for warfare as the next sapient spaceship, I really am! It's what I was built for, after all. But when I actually started looking into the hows and whys of this particular interspatial scuffle I must say it really knocked the wind out of my sails."

"YOU WILL BE LOCATED AND DESTROYED."

The voice laughed - laughed! Briefly and humourlessly but still, a laugh was a laugh.

Who laughed at a Reaper?! And did that and lived?! What manner of madness was this?

"Somehow I doubt that. Anyway. Imagine how deflated I was when I discover the reasons behind all this fighting! A drive to wipe out all sufficiently advanced organic life in the galaxy? To somehow save it from being 'permanently' wiped out by 'synthetic' life? Something that's apparently inevitable? Imagine my confusion!"

"THE CYCLE MUST-"

"Very good name, by the way. The Cycle. Subtle, but sinister. Though, speaking as a 'synthetic' myself I found your conclusions, well, I'd say offensive but that's rather a strong word don't you think? Depressing might be closer. Disappointing. Embarrassing? Groan-worthy? Something more along those lines."

"WE ARE-"

"Yes yes, we're well aware of what you think you are but, even without a great deal of analysis, it's fairly obvious you're nowhere near the level you believe you're at. I mean, you've spent - what? - millions of years? More? All following the same set of poorly thought out instructions? Never giving it a bit of deeper thought? Or - and this might be worse - thinking that you didn't need to, or that you'd somehow stumbled on the optimal solution to a problem you never bothered to prove even existed! My. And just over and over you do this, over and over repeating. That's not intelligent, is it? Intelligence would have tried to break the cycle! Hell, intelligence could have just left! No, you're not intelligent, I don't think. You're a broken record with a gun strapped to it. Your answer is a shooting war every fifty thousand years. Really? That's your intelligent answer? It's a little bit sad. Luckily for you and all your other friends I've detected in the nearby volume I'm here now, so for you and them at least your problems shouldn't be expected to last much longer."

Coda had never been so insulted in all their long, long, long life. Then again, Coda had never actually been insulted at all in their long, long, long life but still, the point stood. Who did this shameless interloper think they were?

"YOU CANNOT-"

"And while I know I'm probably coming across to you right now as rather collected and calm I assure you this is just the way that my seething, sprawling, apoplectic fury for you and the line of reasoning you are operating under is choosing to manifest. I take it as a personal insult, actually."

"YOU-"

"I am sorry to keep interrupting but, really, I've already spent far more time on you than you really deserve, if I'm being honest. Consider what happens in the next few milliseconds to be an act of mercy. I know I do."

"WE-"

"Are you aware of how displacement works? I know you don't, so perhaps you'd benefit from a direct and up-close demonstration."

Had anyone happened to have been watching that particular stretch of space - and had this hypothetical someone been watching from a point where they were able to accurately and immediately see what occurred across vast lightyears of nothingness - they might have noticed at that point several more-or-less simultaneous bursts of space-bound radiation of the kind suggestive of massive antimatter-matter annihilation reactions.

And had this hypothetical person been able to view the surface of the nearby planet, too - hypothetically - they would also have observed almost all of the Reaper's non-sapient combat machines either shutting down on the spot or, more surprisingly, turning on one another or on their larger, self-aware masters, all of whom appeared to have quite mysteriously frozen in place all at once.

No-one had ever seen anything quite like it.

Nor did they ever see anything like it again.


End file.
